Things Left Unanswered
by Mrfipp
Summary: The Doctor arrives to pick up Clara, but arrives a few days too early. Happy Father's Day.


**Things Left Unanswered**

Clara rummaged around the contents of her satchel, making sure that everything she needed for the day was in there. Happy with herself, she grabbed her mobile off the kitchen counter, and prepared herself for a day out.

When suddenly there was the sound of a very loud and distinct groaning noise fading into existence, followed moments later by a loud knocking on the front door.

Opening the door, she found the Doctor wearing what looked like a diving mask mixed with a fencing mask on his head, which was connected by a series of thin plastic tubes to what looked like a large plastic sack filled with red goo strapped to his back.

"Clara!" he happily greeted, pushing the mask up his head, gave her a quick air-kisses, and bustled past her into the house. "Now, I was on my way to pick you up when I took a quick detour to Amali 3.2,"

"Doctor," Clara said, following after the Time Lord, eyeing the goo sack to make sure it didn't end up leaking on the carpet. She didn't know what it was, and didn't want to take the risk of alien slime either blowing up her home, or growing some sort of slime monster.

"-and I decided we should go swimming in the Sea of Round, which are wonderful at this time of year."

"Doctor-"

"Though technically it's three thousand years from now, since at this literal time it's filled with ganop slugs. Nasty little things." Reaching the kitchen, he spun around, pulling the goo sack off his back, in one fluid motion and held it up proudly. "I even brought scuba gear!"

Clara eyed the goo sack briefly, deciding she didn't like it, before looking back to the Doctor. "Doctor."

"Yes?"

"You're early."

"Am I?" he frowned slightly.

Clara nodded. "Yes. By about a few days. It's Sunday."

"Oh…" He now looked very dejected, and lowered the goo sack, placing it on the table.

"Anyway, I have plans today anyway," she said, picking up a pen and poking the goo sack.

The Doctor looked up, suddenly looking much more perked up. "Really? Anything I can help with?"

Clara dropped the pen. "Sorry, Doctor. It's my day with my dad today, and I don't want any the trouble that tends to follow you around."

"Oh, Dave!" the Doctor grinned, and started to wring his hands since they hadn't done much in the last few moments. "I rather like Dave! Only met him once, but left a good impression. Anything special?"

"Well, it's Father's Day, so I thought I'd spend the day with him and do the usual stuff. You know, see a bad movie, go to his favorite restaurant and mock said bad movie."

The Doctor's hands stopped. "Father's Day?"

"Yeah." Reaching across the counter, Clara picked up a card and handed to the Doctor, who took it and looked at the cover (a bear sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper), before opening it.

"Happy Father's Day, Love Angie and Artie." He laughed, and smiled as he read the card, and continued to look at it.

Clara stared at the Doctor, who in turn stared at the card, and not for the first time she found it very tempting to ask a question she knew she wouldn't get an answer for.

At Trenzalore, Clara had jumped directly into the Doctor's time stream, splintering herself across his entire lifetime by the thousands. Numerous copies of her who were born, lived and died to save the Doctor. She doesn't really remember those lives, only the parts where they saved the Doctor, though she remembered a few things about the lives of Oswin Oswald, and Clara Oswin Oswald, though not too much. She's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

However, she knows more than what her copies knew. She knows things that they never would have ever known. She knows about adventures, and planets and friends and enemies and all sorts of things.

The information just sort of presents itself when she's not really thinking. Sometimes, when the Doctor moves to the corner of her vision, he suddenly looks different, like one of his previous ten faces, but only for a moment. Sometime the console room, for a split second, will be one of the past desktop themes. Sometime when he makes an obscure reference to something in his past, she knows what he's talking about.

"_That's the thing about hypnosis," _he one day said, just as they escaped from an assassin that had been put under hypnotic suggestion to kill everyone in the court room of a king of a planet she couldn't pronounce. _"No matter how good it is, you can never really make someone do something against their nature. Someone tried to use a friend of mine to blow me to bits, but luckily she wouldn't hurt a flower."_

Instantly, she had known what he was talking about.

"_You mean Jo and the Master?"_

She didn't like the look he gave her, a cross be between surprise, shock and a mix of horror.

The talked about it later, after they beaten the royal advisor who tried to dispose the king and queen. He said that going down his time stream had possibly imprinted bits and pieces of his life onto her mind, that that the best thing to do was to not think about it. There was no way of knowing how much she took with her, and a human mind can only hold so much.

Since then, she's noticed him being much more guarded when she asked a question, as though he was preparing to be asked something personal. After thinking about it, she doesn't really blame him, it's possible she knows more about him than anyone else, and for a man who has rarely talked about himself to anyone, it's easy to see why he's not comfortable with someone possibly knowing that much.

But for everything she may know about him, there is still so much she doesn't understand at all.

Looking at the Doctor study the card, she heard the echoes of a conversation between two old men in an hospital during World War II.

"_Before the war, I was a father and a grandfather, now I'm neither, but I'm still a doctor."_

"_I know that feeling."_

"Doctor," she said softly.

It took several moments for him to take his eyes off the card and look up at her. "Yes?"

She bit her lower lip, not entirely sure how to proceed. Taking a breath, she decided to try and decided to just go with it. "Back on our first trip, when you took me to Akhaten, and we were in the market place, you said you'd been there before wi-"

"Well look at the time!" the Doctor loudly exclaimed. He looked at his wrist watch, and then held it up close to her face. "Didn't you say you had to meet your dad? Don't want to keep him waiting."

It was true, if the watch was accurate, she'd be at least a few minutes later at this point.

"But Doctor," she tried again, but the Doctor suddenly began to move towards the front door, walking backwards while he continued talking to her.

"No, no! Don't let me hold you back. You go and have fun and mock poorly made films with flimsily written dialogue and sub par cinematography. Check out the Harry Potter remakes if you can, they're not too good, or are they not out yet? No, still a few decades off." He spun around to open the door and stepped back out. "Anyway, I'll be going. Probably in trouble with a Drahvin battle cruiser anyway, bit of a fender bender, so I'll sort that out. See you in a few days!"

Before Clara could protest, the Doctor closed the door, and soon she heard the sound of the TARDIS denaturalizing, again leaving her alone with question left unanswered.

Oh, and he'd left the sack of goo behind too.

000

The Doctor sat in his study. It was a large room, filled with shelves that were filled with books and mementos of the past. He'd been sitting at his favorite desk, that had been covered in various bits; a sporran with some of the fur missing, a golden star covered in cracks, a large red fabric 'A', a tape recorder that he's heard countless times (_-then I'll kick you in the shins and you'll say "Oh, that hurts!")_, and paper model of the TARDIS.

He's not looking at any of these though. Instead, he's sitting on the large rotating leather wingback chair, and it looking towards the item in front of him. Normally it sits by the door, but he's pulled it up to his favorite chair so he can simply stare at it.

It's a simple cot. It's made of old, but strong wood, with model stars hanging above it, and Old High Gallifrian carved into the side.

To him, it simultaneously brings back the greatest, and worst memories of his life.

"Yeah," he said aloud, forlorn. "Happy Father's Day."

000

Please review,

Mrfipp


End file.
